Britain’s Royal Air Force chief says drone swarms ready to crack enemy defenses

That conundrum is on display in Ukraine, where Ukrainian and Russian air-defense capabilities are effectively canceling out the other side’s air power arsenal, according to Justin Bronk, a defense analyst with the London-based Royal United Services Institute. “The fact that air power has ben mutually denied, relatively speaking, in Ukraine by both sides has far more serious implications for us than for either the Russians or the Ukrainians,” he said at the London conference on July 13. That’s because both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries are ultimately dependent on massive land manpower and artillery, whereas joint forces of the U.K. and other western powers are critically dependent on having air access and air superiority, Bronk said.